A huge ‘go-slow’ protest over the cost of fuel is set to bring motorway traffic to a halt across Greater Manchester.

Up to 1,000 vehicles will be involved in the protest on Sunday, May 8, say organisers.

Police have been informed and officers are set to patrol the demonstration.

Three separate convoys will join up then travel to the Stanlow oil refinery at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire. Protesters have vowed to blockade delivery vehicles once there.

In Greater Manchester, vehicles are due to gather at Birch services on the M62 at around 12.30pm.

From there, the convoy will travel to the M56 and on to the M6 before joining up with vehicles travelling from Liverpool. A third group is set to leave North Wales.

All three convoys will then travel on to the refinery.

The protest is being billed by organisers the Stanlow Fuel Protest and Direct Action Group as an ‘anti-fuel tax pincer movement’.

Spokesman Ian Charlesworth said the action would ‘clog up’ major motorways and A-roads from Wales through Greater Manchester and Cheshire. All three convoys are expected to travel at a maximum of 20mph.

Mr Charlesworth said he expected around 500 vehicles to gather for the Manchester leg.

He said: “This is not just a protest from a few lorry drivers.

“The demonstration is a union of all the people in Britain who feel the full effect of fuel taxes on a daily basis.

“Farmers will come out in their tractors, long-distance drivers in their lorries and motorcyclists on their bikes.

“The coalition government will have no choice but to sit up and listen to our message. Driving in this country is becoming a near impossibility.

“We’re encouraging any drivers who feel that they have been getting the raw end of the deal to speak with their vehicles and join us in this protest.”

Further details of the protest are to be revealed tomorrow.

The ‘go-slow’ is being billed as the largest in the north of England since 2008, when hundreds of bikers and other vehicles gathered at Birch services between junctions 18 and 19 of the M62 before travelling into Manchester city centre.

put the price up a bit more.
keep the roads a bit quieter………. 😀

Idiots.

“The coalition government will have no choice but to sit up and listen to our message. Driving in this country is becoming a near impossibility.

No it won’t, it’s in Manchester for a start.

I hope they are all charged for the illegal gathering and that the cops prosecute every tiny infringement of the road traffic act

Driving in this country is becoming a near impossibility.

Oh the irony.

No need to **** shout about it.

public transport in rural areas is a disgrace, there is no alternative for those of us who do not live in large towns or cities than to use our cars. Every increase in fuel increases everything else that is moved by road, food, clothes etc. Up fuel up inflation and we all get poorer.

Unfortunately one of the people who can help reduce fuel prices lives in Libya and is not giving up.

If you actually look into it instead of swallowing propaganda you will see motoring and petrol costs are not high compared to previous years.

Motoring gets massive subsidy from the taxpayer. Be nice to see that subsidy into public transport instead

hopefully the increase in fuel prices will stop all the idiot’s making unecassary journeys.

Would that be the protest that’s already taken place back in January, with the date changed and then sent out as a spam email?

Oh, look !, its STW. Whats the time ?.

Its FLAME O’clock.

Same Shit, another day…

Its not difficult to spot the people on here who don’t drive / own a car.

Of course, its them that don’t mind seeing the price of fuel rise ever higher and see the UK car driver suffer.

Yet listen to them bleet when others have a contrarian opinion on a subject that DOES effect them and the way they chose to live their lives.

Anyone for a 5000 pound a year ownership tax for tandem bikes ?.

Yeah, I wonder who’d get upset then…..

Can’t any of you car haters see further than just your needs.

Thats not a question. I know you can’t.

In your tiny minds, everyone should get a job just round the corner from where they live and wear bamboo sandles to work.
And thats the amusing bit. Cos if some of those car drivers did ditch the car.
Then the car ex-owners would apply for your sorry job and shown up for the feckless gits you are, you useless lot.

Carry on !.
🙄

hopefully the increase in fuel prices will stop all the idiot’s making unecassary journeys.

Like the one I do each day to and from work? Wait I’ll take the bus oh there isn’t one, what about the train, nope not one either.

I’ll ride my bike fine in summer but lack of facilities means shower is miles away from office. So not really an all year or even every day as 40 miles per day is a bit much 5 days a week.

Every weekend if i use the M53, m56.or A55, all roads due to protested, theres always a few shunts that hold the traffic up for hours, so perhaps i`ll not notice any congestion.

It is believed the leaders of the fuel protest will be driving micras, or hondas, and have cushions on the rear parcel shelf, possibly along with a small dog jumping round the back seat.

Will the farmers be protesting about the lack of rain?

Genuine LOL at Captain. You’ll do yourself an injury getting all het up like that. 😯

Touched a raw nerve did I captain? Why should I subsidise you to make unsustainable journeys?

You guys chose that lifestyle – well now you have to pay for it. Unfortunately I do to out of my taxes

When I was a child in the 70’s cars were absolutely everywhere because motoring was so cheap and easy. Everyone had at least 3 of them so that you could rotate the rust evenly.
Of course that was back in the good old days. Cars are now so expensive to run that I can barely recollect the last time I saw one.

“Farmers will come out in their tractors”

How much is red diesel these days? 65p a litre?

The timing’s odd though, traditionally these protests should come immediately after a massively driver-friendly budget so that the organisers can claim credit for something that’s already happened (the 2000 one came immediately after the abolition of the fuel tax escalator)

Funny how everyone loves capitalism and consumerism right up to the point it starts making things they buy more expensive. When things are abundant, they’re cheap, when they become less so, they get more expensive. You can’t have it both ways.

Nah, the the UK population don’t know how to do a proper protest.

We’re very good at grunbling about it to our mates at the Pub though.
DO you think the Coalition govt will pay attention to all the pub-based moaning? Thought not.

Let’s hear it for our Great British Apathy!!

If you actually look into it instead of swallowing propaganda you will see motoring and petrol costs are not high compared to previous years.

I’d be interested to see how you justify this. Though secondhand cars are much better for the money these days petrol has increased at a much greater rate than average earnings. When I started driving in 1997 petrol was about £0.60 a litre, it’s now £1.35. Average earnings have gone up by about 50% in the same period.

Motoring gets massive subsidy from the taxpayer. Be nice to see that subsidy into public transport instead

Subsidy? I understood that meant more was put in than was taken out? Far more is taken in taxation than is spent on the roads or other infastructure.

fuel
smoking
boozing
should all be taxed to hell.
then if you dont use it, you dont pay it.
and i do own a car, but choose not to use it for local journeys, when i can cycle/walk/get a bus.

Very true joao3v16, at least the French put a bit of enthusiasm into it.
What we need is pyres of burning car carcasses across the major motorways.
Those kids were on the right track with setting fire to the scrap yard under the M1, but made the mistake of forgetting to hire a decent PR company beforehand.

They’re going to slow the M56 from Manchester to Chester down on a Sunday?

Woah There! Going straight for the countries jugular there then eh?

Its a day out for a bunch of overweight Welsh farmers. The irony of it being, they’re probably the only Tory voters in Wales. Who gives a ****?

Complaining about a long journey to work because of the choice of place to live is a tad silly. Perhaps living closer to work may cut the cost of travelling?

Gribs – cost of motoring is far more affordable as a % of average earnings – and yes – far more is spent on motoring than is raised from motoring taxation. All the costs that the car lobby conveniently forget, the cost of enforcing motoring law, the cost of all the deaths and injuries, the costs of all the pollution damage, the cost of all the ill health from pollution. The value of tha land that belongs to every one but is used for free car parking

first google one on the first one – if you compare with the 70s its even cheaper.

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/2008/real-cost-of-motoring/

You guys chose that lifestyle – well now you have to pay for it. Unfortunately I do to out of my taxes

Quite right. There is no such thing as rural poverty or impoverished infrastructure. Everyone moves to a life of wealthy privilege in the countryside by choice at the age of 6 weeks then expects city dwellers to pay their way for them.
I don’t see why you should pay for the disadvantaged out of your taxes TJ. You won’t have enough spare change left for your Daily Mail soon.

“Farmers will come out in their tractors”

If they do theyll be in breach of the regs. Tractors running red diesel can only do so for agricultural purposes. Holding up miserable, curly-haired scousers (laudable though it may be) is not technically related to agriculture or forestry.

Note to self: Don’t plan to take the kids to Chester Zoo on Sunday

http://www.mansgreatestmistake.com/category/the-true-cost-of-cars

“…private motor cars will be used on average for about one hour per day. For the other 23 hours they are, in effect, a giant art installation, an enormous engineered monument to the wasteful wealth of our society.”

trailmonkey – Member

Quite right. There is no such thing as rural poverty or impoverished infrastructure. Everyone moves to a life of wealthy privilege in the countryside by choice at the age of 6 weeks then expects city dwellers to pay their way for them.

You forgot “And then are chained to a tractor so they can’t move anywhere else”

Trailmonkey – I have no issue with money going to the poor – its subsidised Moany middle class commuters I dislike subsidising

If fuel is so expensive, how come it’s cheaper for me to drive my car to Brighton (without any passengers) than to take the train ?

I suggest that you organise demonstrations to protest at the cost of public transport project.

The thing I don’t get is that these people are complaining about the cost of fuel, yet are planning on a driving based protest that will utilize fuel, which they’ll then have to buy anyway to get home, after having shunted the price up a bit by blockading the refinery….

It doesn’t seem the most sensible thing to do.

Four of us did 250 miles on Sunday for £35 in petrol.

Fuel’s cheap.

If fuel is so expensive, how come it’s cheaper for me to drive my car to Brighton (without any passengers) than to take the train ?

I suggest that you organise demonstrations to protest at the cost of public transport project.

I totally agree with this(ernie_l), Ton and miketually. I choose to drive 30 miles each way, the cost is worth it in the short term until my career plans can move me closer to where I want to live. I bought an efficient car and only use it for long journeys. I car share and sometimes ride the 30 miles to work and/or back.

Why do people think that fuel is some sort of ‘right’? It’s a luxury in my opinion – how ever did people manage before internal combustion?!?

public transport should be much better and cheaper

but cars are polluting and breed laziness & obesity, run people over etc etc

they are massively overrated imho

People’s lives used to be fairly shite – apart from the rich as usual.

People’s lives used to be fairly shite – apart from the rich as usual.

I agree, however people do not seem to realise that most of us now live a luxury life by comparison. Even if motorised personal transport were too expensive for everyday use, look at the rest of our lives.

TV, any food we want, carbon fiber bikes and binge drinking…